Penkhurst - Nielsen Concerto Finale

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“ W E N E V E R K N O W W H E R E W E ’ L LE N D U P ”Nielsen’s alternative endings to the Flute Concerto

By Tom Pankhurst

In October 1926 a version of Carl Nielsen’s Concerto for Flute and Orchestra was per-

formed in which the composer concluded the work in D major instead of the E major

of the final published version.1 The performance and reception issues around this

change to the concerto are comprehensively discussed in Kirsten Petersen’s article on

pp. 196-225 of this volume, along with an admirable introduction to the structure

and a facsimile reproduction of the original ending. The following article explores

some more detailed analytical and broader theoretical issues that arise from the al-

ternative endings.

The closing keys of the two versions may only differ by a tone, but it is neverthe-

less tempting to read this shift as a seismic one; seismic, that is, for anyone who seeks to

understand Nielsen’s music at the technical level. If there is more than one possible final

key, what does that imply for the rest of the structure? Even if the original ending was

hurriedly dashed off to meet a tight deadline, so that we need not necessarily view it as

more than an emergency short-cut, the nature of the alterations, above all the choice of a

different concluding tonality, should cause at least a tremor of uncertainty in any analyst

who makes claims about structural integrity or dramatic schema based on large-scale

tonal trajectories in Nielsen’s works. Clearly, in this case at least, Nielsen either had no

such guiding strategy in mind at the outset, or he changed his mind about the most

appropriate outcome when he was able to reflect on the matter. Either way, he was

obeying to the letter his radical principle: ‘We never know where we’ll end up’.2

Since, as usual, there is no documentation for the rationale underlying his de-

tailed thought-processes in the composition of the Flute Concerto, we are at liberty to

hypothesize. In so doing we can hardly avoid the truism that endings are something to

take very seriously, not least because of the way in which they reflect back on the rest

1 As detailed in Kirsten Petersen, Preface to Concerto for Flute and Orchestra, Carl

Nielsen Works, II / 9, Copenhagen 2002.

2 Vi aner ikke hvor vi ender, cited in Torben Meyer & Frede Schandorf Petersen,

Carl Nielsen, Kunstneren og Mennesket, Copenhagen 1948, vol. 2, 271.

CN Studies indmad vol II 11/07/05, 14:02132

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“We never know where we’ll end up”

of the work. We therefore stand to gain significant insight into the large-scale design of

one of the last of Nielsen’s major works to lack detailed analytical commentary. At the

same time, we have an opportunity to reflect more broadly upon the nature of tradi-

tional notions of ‘structure’ and ‘work’, embracing the potential threat to these no-

tions represented by Nielsen’s seemingly pragmatic, quasi-improvisational approach

to composition, and hence, ideally, contributing to a wider epistemological debate.

In this short paper I aim to pursue each of these two lines line of enquiry to a

modest degree: whilst the changes Nielsen made to the end of the Flute Concerto can

be understood as reflecting some of the work’s inner dramatic tensions, the fact that

the alternative first version differs so radically in its material and in its tonal goal

also challenges the critical and analytical frameworks – resting on notions of integrity

and of cannot-be-otherwise – within which issues of compositional construction are

usually explored. And it is this broader challenge that I shall address first.

Analysing Endings

The field of semiotics offers a useful theoretical framework for such an investigation

in Raymond Monelle’s discussion of the relationship between art-work and criticism.

Monelle draws on the work of the American philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce, who,

as part of a wide-ranging study of mathematics, logic and metaphysics, proposed vari-

ous ways of categorising objects and the functions of signs. Monelle suggests that, in

Peirce’s terms, music cannot ever properly move from rheme (an object that exists

purely as possibility) to dicent (an object that exists on the plane of the real). He pro-

poses instead that the musical artwork should be understood as a ‘seeming dicent’,

capable of expressing only ‘virtual objects and virtual events’.3 If musical objects only

seem to move from the potentiality of Peirce’s Firstness (as rhemes) to the reality of

Secondness (as dicents) this has ramifications for the level of Thirdness (musical ob-

jects as arguments), on which analysts posit purposeful and logical relationships be-

tween musical objects. Perhaps we should not need reminding that it is only as if the

key of E major at the end of Nielsen’s Concerto is inevitable, but, in the heat of inter-

pretation, it is all too easy to forget that analytical explanation only seems to attain

the status of Peirce’s argument. Monelle suggests that the ‘seeming argument’ identi-

fied by the analyst operates instead on the level of narrative logic;4 to trace a logical

trajectory or an inner coherence is, in this sense, only to tell one of many possible sto-

ries about a work, and Nielsen’s alternative endings bring us face to face with this fact.

In a somewhat different context, Nicholas Cook has also articulated the potenti-

ality of musical objects and their openness to multiple interpretations. One of his ex-

3 Raymond Monelle, Linguistics and Semiotics in Music, London 1992, 219.

4 Ibid., 218


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Tom Pankhurst

amples is a television advert for a Citroen car, in which he suggests that ‘the energetic

and expressive attributes of Mozart’s music [extracts from The Marriage of Figaro] … clus-

ter themselves around the car’:

The music, so to speak, seeks out the qualities of the car, and conversely the

image of the speeding Citroen might be said to interpret the music. … it is cen-

tral to my argument that music never is ‘alone’, that it is always received in a

discursive context, and that it is through the interaction of music and inter-

preter, text and context, that meaning is constructed, as a result of which the

meaning attributed to any given material trace will vary according to the cir-

cumstances of its reception.5

In other words, according to Cook, there is always a relationship between music and

the listener’s interpretative intuitions, whether they are informed by a text, title, pro-

gramme or even an analysis. Hence, there is no such thing as a pure and unmediated

version of a piece of music; the listening experience is always contingent on some-

thing, whether that something be an advert or a scholarly discussion. Our listening

(and analysis) is also radically affected by any previous experience of the music in

question, in particular by our knowledge of how the piece concludes.

The end of a work is, of course, particularly privileged in determining the narra-

tive interpretation that the listener takes away from his or her experience of the piece –

just as with the end of a novel or film. Composers interpret what has gone before in

the way they choose to end a work and, particularly on analytical reflection, our ana-

lytical interpretation ‘seeks out’ those qualities that support the established trajectory

of the piece. On the other hand, if the keys and structures of an individual work are

not locked into generally acknowledged procedures and structures in the way that they

are pre-eminently in the Viennese Classical style, then the terminal key is less impor-

tant than one might think. William Benjamin has pointed out that the emergence of

non-concentric tonal structures – i.e. any structure which ends in a different key from

the beginning – was not the principal challenge to mainstream monotonality; far more

subversive was the way in which Bruckner and other late nineteenth-century compos-

ers relied on a ‘return to’ the opening key, rather than the ‘motion within or prolongation

of that properly speaking constitutes monotonality’.6 If this sense of ‘motion within’

is already not present, an ending in any key can potentially be made to sound con-

vincing. The various traditional modes of conclusion – categorised in relation to fi-

5 Nicholas Cook, ‘Theorizing Musical Meaning’, Music Theory Spectrum, 23

(2001), 180.

6 William Benjamin, ‘Tonal Dualism in Bruckner’s Eighth Symphony’, The

Second Practice of Nineteenth-Century Tonality, W. Kinderman, H. Krebs. (eds.)

Lincoln, Nebraska 1996, 238.


135


nales by Michael Talbot as ‘relaxant’, ‘summative’ or ‘valedictory’7 – are established

much more crucially by parameters such as tempo, dynamics and instrumentation

than by key.

That composers can invite us to hear any number of different possible endings

as convincing is instinctively grasped by many listeners and occasionally voiced by

more open-minded analysts, as by Nicholas Marston apropos the Grosse Fuge and the

original finale to Beethoven’s Op. 131 String Quartet:

musical material is fluid, possessing multiple tendencies and possibilities that

are not directed towards a single inevitable telos … we as listeners or ‘readers’

are ineluctably complicit in creating the sense of an ending.8

Indeed even the most seemingly perfect, balanced and logical ending may be subject

to the general critique advanced by Nielsen himself in his essay ‘The Fullness of Time’:

even if we were to agree that we had achieved the best and the most beautiful

that it is possible to achieve, we should be impelled, in the end, thirsting as we

do more for life and experience than for perfection, to cry out: Give us some-

thing else; give us something new; for Heaven’s sake give us something bad, so

long as we feel we are alive and active and not just passive admirers of tradi-

tion! 9

This thought opens the door to the kind of pragmatic approach to tradition and inno-

vation – including choice of concluding tonality – that marks so many of Nielsen’s ma-

ture concert works. The question then arises as to how the resulting freedom may be

distinguished from the merely arbitrary. And in order to get further towards under-

standing the musical surface in any given instance, we need to ponder the nature of

the contrasts in operation. The contrasts that occur within the framework of the Flute

Concerto as a whole can be read in a number of dimensions, not least those between

orchestra and flute and between different keys. In this article I choose to read them

principally in terms of Schenker’s early ideas on the drama inherent in the tonal system.

7 See Michael Talbot, The Finale in Western Music, Oxford 2001.

8 Nicholas Marston, ‘‘The sense of an ending’: goal-directedness in Beethoven’s

music’, Glenn Stanley (ed.), Beethoven Studies, 84-101, Cambridge 2000, 101.

9 og selv om vi naaede til enighed om, at nu var det bedste og skønneste naaet, vilde

Menneskene, der tørster mere efter Liv og Oplevelse end efter det fuldkomne, tilsidst

raabe i Kor: giv os noget andet, giv os noget nyt, ja giv os i Himlens Navn hellere det

slette og lad os føle, at vi lever, i Stedet for bestandig at gaa rundt i daadløs

Beundring for det engang vedtagne. John Fellow, Carl Nielsen til sin samtid,

Copenhagen 1999, p. 342.


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Tom Pankhurst

Tonal dichotomies – a Schenkerian view

In Harmony, Heinrich Schenker appears to connect the fundamental aesthetic dichotomy

of Artist and Nature to the preoccupation of tonality with flatwards and sharpwards

motion, the two pairs being mediated by the concept of proliferation and return.10

Schenker describes the rising fifth as a ‘descendant’ of the fundamental in the harmonic

series and therefore as having a basis in Nature that may be subverted by the falling fifth

– from, say, dominant to tonic – which is an artistic rather than a natural phenomenon:

Nature had proposed only procreation and development, an infinite forward

motion [in which each tone posits itself as a root with its own overtones]. The

artist on the other hand, by construing a fifth-relationship in inverse direction,

falling from high to low, has created an artistic counterpart to Nature’s propo-

sition: an involution.11

The wider context for this reading is Schenker’s idea that tonal music is the result of

a constant struggle between Artist and Nature. He considers that ‘every tone is pos-

sessed of the same urge to procreate infinite generations of overtones ... [and] contains

within itself its own major triad’.12 It is from this idea that Schenker develops the

idea of tonicization as an instance of Nature getting the upper hand – the overtones of

a given scale-step break free from the constraints of the diatonic scale of the original

tonic.13 He goes on to explain the conflicting demands made on the Artist by the pro-

creative urges of the tones on the one hand and the need to produce a comprehensi-

ble work of art on the other:

On the one hand, he was faced with the egotism of the tones, each of which ...

insisted on its right to its own perfect fifth and major third ... On the other

hand, the common interest of the community that was to arise from the mu-

tual relations of these tones demanded sacrifices.14

As pointed out by Gary Don, Schenker’s play of forces echoes Goethe’s notion of Stei-

gerung, in which the tendency for growth and elaboration is countered by Spezifikation-

trieb, which ‘keeps growth from getting out of hand, from changing the plant to a point

where its form is no longer recognisable’.15 This is particularly interesting in relation

10 Heinrich Schenker, Harmony, Oswald Jonas (ed.), Elizabeth Mann Borgese (tr.),

Cambridge Mass. 1994, especially 31-43.

11 Ibid., 31.

12 Ibid., 28-9.

13 Ibid., 252.

14 Ibid., 30.

15 Gary Don, ‘Goethe and Schenker’, In Theory Only, 10/8 (1988), 6.


137


to Nielsen’s dramatic pushing at the boundaries of tonal sense.16 But for the time be-

ing I shall continue to concentrate on rising and falling fifths in the abstract, before

redirecting attention to the Flute Concerto.

To suggest that rising fifths are somehow more ‘natural’ – a notion Schenker

explicitly extends to sharpwards harmonic progression17 – in a sense inverts our intui-

tions. Flatwards progression – each step being analogous to a perfect cadence – seems

somehow ‘easier’ than sharpwards motion, which, in order to be consolidated, would

necessitate a further step to the new dominant-of-the-dominant and back. As we have

seen, however, Schenker’s idea is that the sharpwards proliferation is natural – by

analogy with biological growth – and that this process is forcibly (by the human

agency of the artist) reversed by flatwards motion. Nielsen’s characteristic rising-fifth

background structures – which are fundamental to his Second, Third, Fourth and

Fifth Symphonies as well as to the Flute Concerto, despite being incomplete in

Schenkerian terms – would thus be interpretable not so much as struggling to

progress against the grain as of letting Nature have her head.

A sharpwards trajectory

In these terms, Nielsen’s sharpwards modulating compositions shift the ideal balance

that Schenker proposes between Artist and Nature (as exemplified in the monotonal

Ursatz) towards the latter, as it were freeing the ‘natural’ development of sharpwards

movement without letting the music run out of control. This metaphorical dialectic

is particularly appropriate in the case of the Flute Concerto, which, at least in its de-

finitive form with the revised ending, traces across its two movements the same basic

background bass progression as The Inextinguishable – from D through A to E.

The opposition of Artist and Nature also maps interestingly onto the more obvi-

ous dichotomy between wild, unruly forces within the orchestra (particularly the clari-

net and trombone) and a flute part that, as Robert Simpson suggests, ‘is exquisitely

calculated to suit the character of its dedicatee, inclined to fastidious taste’.18 It is sig-

nificant in this regard that the unruly (and therefore ‘natural’?) trombone provokes

two of the most crucial sharpwards modulations (in the first movement at bb. 80-100

and at the end of the work). Similarly, when the flute is allowed to express its more

‘artistic’ lyrical character, it tends to do so on the flat side of the work’s tonal spec-

trum. Counter-intuitive though it may appear to be, Schenker’s metaphorical reading

of sharpwards and flatwards motion therefore seems highly appropriate in the case

16 See Tom Pankhurst, ‘Different names for the same thing …? Nielsen’s Forces,

Schenker’s Striving, Tarasti’s Modalities and Simpson’s Narratives’, Carl

Nielsen Studies, 1 (2003), 133.

17 Schenker, op. cit., 32ff.

18 Robert Simpson, Carl Nielsen: Symphonist 1865-1931, London 1979, 140.


138

Tom Pankhurst

of the Flute Concerto. I am not of course suggesting that the Artist versus Nature di-

chotomy is explicitly the subject matter of this work, simply that a number of opposi-

tions within the work may fruitfully be read in this way.

As shown in Ex. 1, the first hundred bars of the first movement offer a prom-

ising start to any search for stories concerning sharpwards and flatwards movement.

After a ferocious clash between D and Eb, the tonality is settled in favour of the latter,

with a restrained semiquaver theme introduced by the flute (incipit A). From here

it is possible to trace a steady sharpwards motion through a return to D at b. 80 and

on to an E major climax at b. 101 (incipit B), which is clarified on the bass stave of Ex. 1

by the beams and arrows connecting sharpwards motion on two levels. This journey

from the genteel restraint of b. 12 to the boisterous muscularity of b. 101 seems to

support a reading that maps flatwards vs. sharpwards opposition onto ‘artistic’ fastidi-

ousness versus ‘natural’ unruliness.

Ex. 1: Graph of Flute Concerto, first movement, bb. 1-101.

incipit A

incipit B

12

31

34 44

70

74 (80) 91

B

101

I

A

V

II

12

p

solo flute

pizz. strings(bass only)

101

strg. (+ 8ve & 2 8ve above)

ww. (+ 2 8ve below)

ff

mf

mf

timp.


139


The two sharpwards steps from D to E across this phase of the first movement prefig-

ure the overall trajectory of the work in its final version, and the relationship of

this E major passage at b. 101 to the end of the Concerto highlights the relevance of

Peirce’s trichotomy to this situation. A listener who has not previously heard the work

could not know of any connection between the E major at 101 and the end of the work,

although he or she may be aware that such connections may exist (Firstness); a repeat

listener may, perhaps cued by the motivic connection to the end of the work (i.e. the

trombone from b. 200 in the second movement), experience a frisson of familiarity

and expectation (Secondness); the analyst-listener, on the other hand, may ideally

understand and interpret the connection (Thirdness).

The fact of Nielsen’s re-writing reduces the gap between these different experi-

ences. His apparently changing interpretation of his own music by his alternative

endings renders the analyst, like the naïve listener, only able to speculate about po-

tential and possibility: if the work ends in D, then the first movement’s E major sec-

tion is out on a sharpwards limb, from which there will ultimately be a retreat; if the

work ends in E, then b. 101 invites interpretation as something like a first attempt or

premature arrival. With two possible endings in view instead of one, the ‘seeming’

quality of musical objects posited by Monelle comes into relief: if the strongly

sharpwards orientated first movement suggests that the work ‘must’ break free from

the confines of D, this imperative was evidently not clear to the composer when he

wrote the first version of the ending.

Finale

The second movement of the concerto is a sonata rondo, the two versions of the work

being identical until b. 169 – halfway through the recapitulation. After a violent and

angular introductory string unison centred on D, the beginning of the movement settles

flatwards onto a whimsical G major (Ex. 2, incipit A). This flatwards tonal trajectory

continues towards the key of F at b. 50, as shown in Ex. 2. As the rondo theme trans-

fers to the strings, the solo flute trills elegantly over the top; in terms of the dicho-

tomy outlined above, the refined Artist has Nature firmly tamed (by falling fifths)

as this Arcadian vision of tranquillity fades away in b. 61. In the second subject, the

flute adopts a more muscular persona, and in a slower triple time the music climbs

back sharpwards towards G. In a seeming parody of the end of the first subject, how-

ever, the section ends with the flute skittering in panic over the fortissimo orchestral

tutti. In the terms set out by Schenker, it is as if, by instigating a sharpwards trajec-

tory, the flute has unleashed elemental forces that it is unable to control. Incipit B

shows the first re-assertion of the second subject, just before it is brought to this

sudden and rather brutal end.


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Tom Pankhurst

Ex. 2: Graph of Flute Concerto, second movement, bb. 1-145 (both versions)

incipit A

incipit B

The development section compresses a similar sequence of events into a slightly

shorter span. The flatwards drift takes us only as far as the subdominant (b. 123) and

is cut short by a return of the staccato unison from the introduction (b. 128). The sec-

ond subject provides an immediate and impassioned sharpwards corrective (b. 138),

with a D7 chord paving the way for the return of the G major rondo theme in b. 145,

which seems weak, even prosaic, after the drama of the second subject material. The

transformation of the opening rondo material from 2/4 into 6/8 exacerbates the sense

that this theme is now inappropriately light-hearted in relation to the seriousness of

intervening events.

One of Robert Simpson’s principal interpretative conceits is to suggest that the

listener’s belief in the ability of various keys to provide adequate closure may be un-

Intro Exposition

A

Rondo1st Sub.

12

29

50 62

2nd Sub.

73

B

85

Development

93

Rondo1st Sub.

123

(Intro)

128 138

2nd Sub.

145

Recap.

Rondo1st Sub.

I

6

#642

6

I

642

V

642

6

I

12

solo fl. & strings

mp

grazioso

85

ff

solo fl.

ob. & vl. + 8ve above

tutti string chords (lowest note only shown)


141


dermined by their dramatic context – G major in the Fifth Symphony, for example,

becomes ‘philosophically as well as musically not possible’.19 The notion that keys in

Nielsen’s works are by turns compromised or valorised this way, until only one is left

in contention, is powerful and fascinating, but it does not sufficiently acknowledge the

fact that one could probably construct, post hoc, narratives to justify nearly any ending.

By the beginning of the recapitulation in the second movement of the Flute Concerto,

many dramatic oppositions have been brought into play: sharpwards versus flat-

wards tonal movement, flute versus orchestra, stability versus instability, artistic polish

versus raw power. These are not simple polarities in which one term is clearly more

desirable than the other; they form part of a wider aesthetic tension between the idea

of the traditional light-hearted rondo-finale and something much more threatening.

It is a dilemma perhaps best encapsulated by Nielsen’s plea, quoted above: ‘for Heaven’s

sake give us something bad, so long as we feel we are alive and active and not just pas-

sive admirers of tradition!’ Whilst the G major rondo theme is pleasantly familiar on

its recapitulation, the concerto, particularly in its first movement, has already sum-

moned forces that are less controllable but more exhilarating.

That Nielsen redrafted the end suggests that there are at least two plausible

ways of working through this problem. From this point of view, the original (and

briefer) D major ending implies that satisfactory tonal closure is ultimately achievable

and that it is possible to subsume the previous energies and ambiguities into a mono-

tonal scheme. The final version, however, with its more exhilarating but less unequi-

vocally triumphant E major ending rather seems to suggest that there is in fact no

real way to resolve the work’s tonal tensions.

Ex. 3 shows the second movement’s recapitulation as it appears in the final

version of the work. One can trace a similar sharpwards trajectory towards E major to

that at the beginning of the first movement (Ex. 1) and the two sections also have

motivic material in common. In this final version, the music swings wildly between

the E�, the key in which the polite semiquavers in b. 12 of the first movement appeared,

and E major, at the sharpwards limit of the concerto’s tonal range. Out of these con-

flicting keys emerges a tranquil G major (incipit B), the notional home tonic of this

movement; but the music then pushes sharpwards on to a properly established E

major at b. 200.

In terms of the Artist versus Nature dichotomy, this represents at least a par-

tial triumph of natural proliferation over monotonal artistic involution (i.e. the return

to the initial tonic by descending fifth from the dominant). Only infinite sharpwards

movement would be a true victory for Nature, however; so, strictly speaking, any sort of

tonal closure might, in this context, be understood as representing an Arcadian ideali-

19 Simpson, op. cit., 108.


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Tom Pankhurst

zation. This throws light on the passage shown in incipit D, a sudden irruption of vio-

lence that comes immediately after the arrival on E. Why this sudden petulance from

the flute and timpani now that the energetic E major from the first movement has

been recaptured? Perhaps the point is that in the act of capture the vitality is lost –

the confirmation of something (in this case E major) can never be as exciting as its

discovery. Whatever the rationale, this suddenly violent passage reminds us, with less

than fifty bars to go, that uncontrollable forces are still crucially present.

Gunnar Heerup wrote of the definitive version of the Flute Concerto in 1927

that ‘the last third of the [second] movement [of the concerto] seems without justi-

fied connection to the rest and along with the rhapsodically abrupt ending gives the

movement a strangely short-tailed impression’.20 In terms of the foregoing interpreta-

tion, this effect might be quite deliberate: Nielsen would rather give us something

Heerup considers ‘bad’ than construct a finely wrought peroration that simplistically

subsumes the dramatic and aesthetic complexities of the work. If E major was more

gradually achieved or more comprehensively established, the sublime fragility of the

arrival on E major at b. 200 (Ex. 3, incipit C) would either be lost or crushed under the

weight of triumphant confirmation.

Ex. 3: Graph of Flute Concerto, second movement, bb. 145-end (published version)

20 Cited in Petersen, op. cit., xxxii

145

157

161

tritone

164

167

169

172

174

A

179

182

187

G:I

VI

II

(Eb: I)

tritone

E:

IIIV

B

I

187

195 200

211

tritone

D

222 231

tritone

E

248

255

B C

E:

I

I

tritone

V

I


143


incipit A

incipit B

incipit C

incipit D

incipit E

175

187

Strings

195

Solo fl.

p

Trb.

ff

dim.

Lower strings

ff

+ sustained chords in bassoons and horns

p espress.

pizz.

p

219

(dim.)

pp

fff

ff

258

& ####(p)

solo fl.œ œn œ. œ.n œ. œ.n œ.œ. œ>n œœ. œ.b œ>b œb œ.b œb œb œ œ.n œ. œ>n œœ. œ.n œ>b œb œ.n œ.# œ.# œ.œ. œ.# œœœœ œœœœœœ

trombone

ff

œœœœœœ œœœ.≈ ‰

mp

Œ. Œ ‰œœœ œ. œœœ sempre f˙.

gliss.f

˙. œ. œJ ‰‰

? ####(p)æææ̇ .

timp. æææ̇ . æææ̇ .cres - - -

cres - - -

cen - - -

cen - - -

æææ̇ .do

do

ffæææœ.

fæææœ.œ. ff

gliss. œj‰ ‰ Œ. mpœ fz

gliss.œJ Œ.œJ Œœœ‰ ‰œ

>Jœ.œ

>œ

>œ

>gliss. œj‰ ‰ œ.œ

>œ

>œ

>œ.œ

>œ

>œ

>œ

>œ

>œ œJœ

j

& #### ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑strings and woodwind

trombone‰ ‰ œœœœj

œœœœ

œœœœ

œœœœ

œœœœ

œœœœj

œœœœ

œœœœ

œœœœ

œœœœ

œœœœj

œœœœ œœœœ œœœœ ˙̇̇̇....ff

˙̇̇̇.... œœœœ.... œœœœj ‰‰

‰‰

? #### ∑ ∑ ∑ ∑ ‰ ‰f

œJ œ œ œ œ œJ œ œ œ œ dim.œJ œ œ œ ˙. ˙. œ.p

œJ ‰‰


144

Tom Pankhurst

A prominent feature of the recapitulation of the second movement in its final version

is the tritone relationship. This interval maintains an ambivalent position within the

tonal system in that it makes the closure of the diatonic cycle of fifths possible, and

yet, within the artifice of equal temperament, it represents the furthest one can

travel from a given point of departure. This dual role as agent of both return and rup-

ture makes the tritone especially interesting from the point of view of the Artist versus

Nature dichotomy.21

In the foreground, a string of parallel tritones from b. 175 (incipit A in Ex. 3) dis-

rupts the surrounding prolongation of the dominant of E, and the final confirma-

tion of this key is rudely interrupted, the flute going almost completely off the rails at

b. 211, underpinned by a pedal on the timpani that moves from A to Eb (Ex. 3, incipit D).

The ensuing E major at b. 231 is relatively weakly projected and itself drifts into a

tritonally related Bb, as shown on Ex. 3. It is as if Nielsen wants to keep open the

prospect of tonal disruption, avoiding the artifice of triumphant closure. The final thir-

teen bars first recall the skittish flute and timpani duet from b. 211 before conclud-

ing with a contemptuous E major cadence accompanied by loud trombone yawns

(Ex. 3, incipit E). Simpson interprets this as a kindly joke on the work’s fastidious

dedicatee,22 but it could equally be understood as a symptom of what I understand as the

work’s central dilemma – the tension between proliferation and closure, exhilarating

chaos and satisfying order, Nature and Artist.

Ex. 3 also shows how the middleground linear structure can be read as a rising

span of three whole tones in the treble from D to G �. It is interesting that this is com-

parable with the upper-voice progression in the first hundred bars of the con-

certo, which similarly spans a sharpwards trajectory to E (as shown on Ex. 1, where the

top-line progression is from F to B). In the first version of the concerto the top voice in

the second movement comprises a third progression from D to F � (see Ex. 5). In the pub-

lished version the final step up a tone to G � helps define the modulation from one

diatonic collection to another. What makes this middleground progression tense and

subversive is that, within a given key, the last note of a tritone progression would be

expected to resolve either down from 4̂ to 3̂ or up from 7̂ to 8̂. The middleground

tritone takes us out of the closure suggested by the tranquil G major at b. 187 and into a

new tonal region, breaking open the artifice of the closed tonal structure.

It is noteworthy that there are also several examples of tritones closer to the

foreground. Ex. 4a from the first movement comes from just before the arrival back

on D at b. 80 (cf. Ex. 1). The passage as a whole spans a tritone in the bass, and the fi-

21 Schenker understood the tritone primarily as an artistic abandonment of

Nature’s perfect fifth for the sake of diatonic comprehensibility (see Schenker

op. cit., 42-44)

22 Simpson, op. cit., 142.


145


nal ascent in the treble spans the same interval. There are also many vertical tritones.

It is interesting that this tritone passage occurs just before the first significant inter-

vention of the trombone and timpani, the two main sources of disruption from

within the orchestra. Ex. 4b represents a moment of exhilarating energy as the music

surges sharpwards from F through A to F#. Whole-tone scales, including a span of a

tritone, seem to drive the music along this trajectory. Ex. 4c marks the beginning of

the rondo theme’s tonal explorations in the development of the last movement, as

again the tritone is associated with breaking out of the diatonic scale.

Ex. 4: Extracts involving tritones from Flute Concerto (published version)

a) first movement, bb. 74ff.

b) first movement, bb. 134ff.

74

f

cre - - scen - - do

accel.

ff`

134

ff


146

Tom Pankhurst

c) second movement, bb. 100ff.

Two endings: the artifice of closure

Ex. 5 shows the tonal structure of Nielsen’s first version of the recapitulation of the

second movement. I earlier suggested that in a tonally non-concentric work nearly any

key might be made to sound convincing. If this is to some extent true, it is perhaps the

manner in which Nielsen arrives at D and E in his two versions of the concerto that is

more important than the keys themselves. I will speculate below on how the final

tonal destination reflects back on the overall structure, but in terms of the immediate

dramatic impact of the ending, the local tonal shape of the last twenty-six bars is more

important than their place in the overall key scheme of the piece.

In both versions of the concerto there are episodes of tonal dislocation, but

there is a crucial difference of context. In the final version, bb. 145-187 offer the poten-

tial of a closed structure, albeit one in which the mediant and flat submediant would

have to be understood as substituting for a dominant, a weak but plausible prolon-

gation of G. It would be perfectly possible to establish G more firmly in the ensuing

bars, but this fragile structure is instead broken apart, and the movement ends in E. It

is interesting to compare the music that precipitates this tonal rupture in the final

version to its equivalent in the first draft. Whereas the dramatic trombone interven-

tion at b. 195 in the final version (Ex. 3, incipit C) occurs at the moment the music

shifts from G to E major, the same intervention in Nielsen’s first attempt (Ex. 5, incipit

B) is framed within the terminal D major prolongation. This radically affects the status

of the trombone intervention and consequently the balance between tonal prolifera-

tion and closure at the end of the work.

Ex. 5: Graph of Flute Concerto, end of second movement, bb. 145-end (first version)

101

145

161

169

171

173 176

181

183

189

I

VI

II

A

I

B

V

V

I


147


incipit A

incipit B

Ex. 6 puts the two endings of the Flute Concerto in context, or, more to the point, reads

the rest of the work in relation them. Although the first movement is not, of course,

materially affected by the revision, at least not for a first-time listener, it is nevertheless

tempting to trace a progression from II through VI to III at the end of the first move-

ment (see dotted lines above the bass stave of Ex. 6b) when just such a two-stage

sharpwards movement spans the published version of the last movement. The revi-

sion means that untrammelled sharpwards motion becomes the most significant large-

scale organizing principle across the work, replacing what is in many ways the tighter

and more immediately logical structure shown in Ex. 6a.

Ex. 6a: Graph of Flute Concerto, entire, (first version)

169

upper ww. & strings

lower ww. & strings + brass

173

solo flute

68

timp.

f marcato il ritmo

Trb.

3

3

1st movement

44 91 101 134

146 158 171

178

180

2nd movement

12 157

161 189

D: I

II

=III

(G: I

IV I)

V

I


148

Tom Pankhurst

Ex. 6b: Graph of Flute Concerto, entire (published version)

As shown in Ex. 6a, the whole concerto in its original form can be understood as a pro-

longation of D minor/major. From this perspective, the main body of the last move-

ment, with its periodically returning G major, becomes a large-scale approach to the

dominant A (which arrives at b. 161) – a subdominant relaxation that, by the end of

the movement, takes quite an act of will to overcome. In Ex. 6b it again takes an effort

of will to break out of the G major rondo, but the context is very different: the overall

trajectory is of relentless sharpwards motion, from which the beginning of the sec-

ond movement provides a temporary reprieve.

Ex. 7 shows a falling fourth motif prominently figuring in the original con-

clusion that does not appear in the final section of the published version of the

concerto; it can be traced back to the first appearance of the rondo theme (Ex. 7a). At

b. 169, this motif reappears as an accompanying figure in the bass, which, with its

emphasis on A, gives the music a feeling of leaning towards the dominant chord

(Ex. 7b). In the light of the wider context outlined above, this could be understood as

helping to secure D against its tendency to act as a dominant and thus to move flat-

wards. In this way this innocuous accompanying figure assumes an important role in

the dramatic tension between the comfortable G major that has dominated the second

movement and the more edgy sharpwards orientation of the first movement. It is inter-

esting that in the final bars, the motif subtly recalls the wider subdominant tendency

of this movement by slipping in an extra step to G before leaping down to D (see brass

line on Ex. 7c). The context in the final version of the Concerto is totally different,

because the G/D plagal ambiguity is made irrelevant by the bold sharpwards move to

E major. As a result there is not the same need to safeguard the ‘tonic D’ against be-

coming a dominant.

1st movement

44

91

101

134

146 158 171

178

180

2nd movement

12 157

161 169 179 188 200

231

D: I

V

II

II

VI

III

G: V I VI

II III

I E: I

V

I


149


Ex. 7: Motivic use of falling fourths in Flute Concerto (first version)

a) second movement, bb. 12ff.

b) second movement bb. 169ff. (first version)

c) second movement, end (first version)

12

Solo fl. & strings

mp

grazioso

169

Woodwind

Brass

Timpani

Solo Flute

Strings

2

4

68

ff

fz

Molto Rit.

Molto Rit.

Woodwind

Brass

Timpani

Solo Flute

Strings

fz fz

fz


150

Tom Pankhurst

In the original version, the proliferating sharpwards tendencies of the first movement

are balanced by subdominant tendencies in the second movement, a strategy that re-

sults in overall closure in D, albeit heavily inflected by this subdominant. In the final

version, however, the same sequence of events culminates in a breaking-out of the

closed structure into a highly idiosyncratic E major ending. Nielsen seems delibe-

rately to strive for an uneasy truce between the forces of disruption and closure in

that the artifice of tonal closure is eventually accepted, but this is countered by a non-

concentric background structure and many foreground disruptions. Whereas the

first version concludes with a comparatively unequivocal D major, the published con-

certo offers a brief vision of a bucolic G major ending at b. 187 before being thrust

rudely into an E major that, as discussed above, is far from a triumphant summation.

In his survey of generic patterns of development in the concerto finale, Michael

Talbot suggests that ‘the concerto likes to end with relaxant jollity’ – ‘relaxant’, that is,

as opposed to his other two main categories of ‘summative’ or ‘valedictory’.23 He im-

plicitly includes Nielsen Flute Concerto in this category, discussing it in the next

paragraph as an example of the neo-Classical trend for multiple soloists. It seems to

me that yet another underlying tension in the concerto is in fact that Nielsen cannot

or will not decide whether the finale is ‘relaxant’ or ‘summative’, the first category,

according to Talbot, being an envoi and the second a dénouement.24 The second move-

ment settles quickly into the relaxant vein but by the end it has acquired many qualities

of the summative category. It brings back previous themes (b. 200 is a gloriously tran-

scendent version of b. 101 from the first movement) and is certainly not lacking in

drama, but the final E major is so short and lacking in weight and the end so anticli-

mactic that, judged as a summation in the usual sense, it is surely a failure. Nielsen

was quite capable of composing a transcendent blaze of glory, but, even more than in

the Fourth Symphony and somewhat less than the Sixth, he seems in the Flute Con-

certo deliberately to compose music that explicitly casts doubt on its own ending.

In this article I have mostly chosen to interpret dramatic musical contrasts

through the filter of a battle between the forces of Nature, with its unpredictable vi-

tality, and Art, which, as Schenker suggests in Free Composition, provides the closure

not on offer in life: ‘Man lives his whole life in a state of tension. Rarely does he experi-

ence fulfilment; art alone bestows on him fulfilment, but only through selection and

condensation.’25 The unexpected disruptions and brevity of the ending of Nielsen’s

Flute Concerto give it a raw vitality; closure and synthesis are invigorated by wayward-

ness and disruption.

23 Talbot, op. cit., 180.

24 Ibid., 83.

25 Heinrich Schenker, Free Composition, Oswald Jonas (ed.); Ernst Oster (tr. and ed.),

New York 1979, xxiv.


151


In the original version of the concerto the tendency to break out of structures

both tonal and formal is subsumed within a monotonal scheme. The E major version,

on the other hand, foregrounds sharpwards expansion and erases the previous over-

arching D major structure entirely in the process – the key has not, after all, been estab-

lished convincingly elsewhere. As this process of recomposition suggests, the analysis

of structure is really an exploration of the act of structuring on the part of the listener/

analyst – out of many possible musical threads one chooses to understand a work as

coherent in terms of a tonal trajectory, motivic network or series of expressive devices.

Unless the possibility of different compositional choices is denied, such coherence can

only be ‘seeming’, a fiction that fits with the facts of the composition as written. I am

emphatically not suggesting that there is any sort of dramatic ambiguity with regard

to the final key in the Flute Concerto – there is no particular play on listener expecta-

tions in that sense – rather, the dramatic play is on a much more fundamental level –

something that the change of tonal structure points up rather than exposes.

I have described this play primarily in terms of Schenker’s dichotomy of Artist

and Nature, not least because, on a deep structural level, the E major version represents

a victory for the forces of ‘natural’ proliferation, whilst the D major conclusion effects

an ‘artistic’ return. Gunnar Heerup, whose opinion on the short-tailed nature of the

work I quoted earlier, invokes a different but related dichotomy – that of the ‘sculp-

tural’ (in the sense of structured or moulded) and imaginative (in the sense of free or

rhapsodic).26 However we understand this fundamental duality, it inevitably creates a

crisis in terms of the how to end a work. One of the possible solutions to the problem

of how to encapsulate both freedom and closure is to close and yet acknowledge the

contingency of that closure. In this sense the short-tailed nature of both versions of

the ending of the Flute Concerto helps to expose the artifice of large-scale closure, to

acknowledge that the closure is not real or permanent. This ‘seeming’ quality of the

ending, both in the foreground and on the largest scale, is, of course, doubly exposed

by the fact that there are two fully realized endings.

26 Cited in Petersen, op. cit., xxxii

A B S T R A C T

The two alternative endings to Carl Nielsen’s Flute Concerto conclude the work in dif-

ferent keys. This article explores some analytical and theoretical issues raised by the

radically different overall tonal structures implied by these different conclusions,

taking the opportunity to reflect on our understanding of what tonal closure means

for Nielsen.


Documents

Penkhurst - Nielsen Concerto Finale